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How Viable Is Large Scale Wind Energy?
New submitter notscientific writes "Renewable sources of energy are obviously a hit but they have as yet failed to live up to the hype. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows however that there is more than enough power to be harnessed from the wind to sustain Earth's entire population... x200! To generate energy from the wind, we may however need to set up wind farms at altitudes of 200-20,000 metres. To be fair, the study is purely theoretical and does not look at the feasibility of such potential wind farms. Regardless, the paper does provide a major boost to backers of wind-generated energy. Science has confirmed that the sky's the limit."
True. But luckily we neither need, nor want, one single answer that solves everything. We're better off in a multitude of ways from havign a healthy mix of different energy-sources, rather than being subject to the whims of a single one.
It's better to have some hydropower, some wind, some sun, some nuclear, some hydrocarbons, some tides, some biomass instead of putting all our eggs in one basket. As such, "can we cover our entire energy-needs *only* with wind?" is the wrong questions. The right question is if wind can be one part of the overall solution, it seems pretty clear to me that the answer to that is "yes".
As for NIMBY, there's solutions to that. Fewer people are bothered by wind-farms being installed a few miles offshore, such as those in the UK and Denmark currently, for example.
....No one has actually _built_ a wind power turbine setup that operates at well above the ground. I mean, consider the issues involved:
1. How are we going to keep those turbines up at altitude?
2. What are the costs of tethering these high-flying wind turbine installations?
3. Will these installations become hazards to migratory birds flying at high altitude, let alone passing airplanes of all sizes?
4. How much damage will these things do if they start shedding parts.
I'd rather build hundreds of nuclear reactors based on the safe liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) technology instead in the short to medium term, and in the longer term build space-based solar power arrays parked in geosynchronous or near-geosynchronous orvbit.
You can get nuclear powerplant, a solar array, a coal burner, a gas burner, a wind farm. But something is going to have to generate that electricity you keep on consuming.
Make a choice. Oh wait, I forgot. Democracy, power without accountability. You can vote to have your cake and eat it to.
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The big problem we have now is not energy production. It is energy storage. We need to shift energy consumption to when we have a surplus of production. If you can have your electric water heater (there are electric tank water heaters) only heat up at night when electricity is cheap, then you are shifting energy consumption and making the system more efficient. It would be worthwhile loss in efficiency (heat loss from the tank). On demand water heaters cannot shift energy consumption, so while they may be a little more energy efficient, they would be much less grid efficient.
So, once the "smart grid" has been deployed, we might move AWAY from on demand water heaters and back to tanks.
To avoid NIMBY, there are lots of turbines in NW Indiana-- out in the corn and soybean fields. At night, there is this weird horizon of blinking red aviation warning lights as the props turn from horizon to horizon in seeming unison. Better than the coal-fired plants with plumes you can see for a hundred miles.
Multiple sources, as you cite, are a great idea.
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People have studied it, and nothing significant happens because you don't stop the wind, just slow it down very slightly like all the trees you chopped down and terrain you flattened used to.
I really can't believe this got modded up even by one point. It is on about the same level as people who worry that Britain will be blown away by all the windmills, sailing off into the Atlantic.
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I think CEOs (and their families) of companies should be required to live downwind/downstream from their plants. Would make them think twice about cost vs pollution issues.
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